Stuart Clapp’s Factor ViSTA

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The launch of the Factor ViSTA was held in the New Forest just as the leaves started to turn brown for autumn. There was something Tolkienesque about being amongst the trees and the wild horses – all that was missing were the elves. There is, oddly, a similarity between JRR’s prose and Factor’s all-road super bike. What’s elvish for “One bike to rule them all”?

N+1? Or is the Factor ViSTA an N-2 (yes, minus two) as it was for our Desire editor? Factor says the ViSTA is an all-road bike: Not a gravel bike, not a road bike, but a bike capable of opening up new routes otherwise off limits to roadies. Importantly, it’ll do so without hampering performance, regardless of what’s beneath the rolling rubber.

This one, featured in the Desire section of issue 20.1, has an uncompromised build featuring Shimano’s gravel-specific GRX Di2 groupset, and a set of Black Inc Thirty wheels shod with Panaracer Gravel King tyres.